Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples Part 11

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 136.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 137.]

With the gesture for drink may be compared Fig. 138, the Egyptian G.o.ddess Nu in the sacred sycamore tree, pouring out the water of life to the Osirian and his soul, represented as a bird, in Amenti (Sharpe, from a funereal stele in the British Museum, in _Cooper's Serpent Myths_, p. 43).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 138.]

The common Indian gesture for _river_ or _stream, water_, is made by pa.s.sing the horizontal flat hand, palm down, forward and to the left from the right side in a serpentine manner.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 139.]

The Egyptian character for the same is Fig. 139 (Champollion, _Dict._, p. 429). The broken line is held to represent the movement of the water on the surface of the stream. When made with one line less angular and more waving it means _water_. It is interesting to compare with this the identical character in the syllabary invented by a West African negro, Mormoru Doalu Bukere, for _water_, [Symbol: water, represented by a wavy line], mentioned by TYLOR in his _Early History of Mankind_, p. 103.

The abbreviated Egyptian sign for _water_ as a stream is Fig. 140 (Champollion, _loc. cit._), and the Chinese for the same is as in Fig.

141.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 140.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 141.]

In the picture-writing of the Ojibwa the Egyptian abbreviated character, with two lines instead of three, appears with the same signification.

The Egyptian character for _weep_, Fig. 142, an eye, with tears falling, is also found in the pictographs of the Ojibwa (Schoolcraft, I, pl. 54, Fig. 27), and is also made by the Indian gesture of drawing lines by the index repeatedly downward from the eye, though perhaps more frequently made by the full sign for _rain_, described on page 344, made with the back of the hand downward from the eye--"eye rain."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 142.]

The Egyptian character for _to be strong_ is Fig. 143 (Champollion, _Dict._, p. 91), which is sufficiently obvious, but may be compared with the sign for _strong_, made by some tribes as follows: Hold the clinched fist in front of the right side, a little higher than the elbow, then throw it forcibly about six inches toward the ground.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 143.]

A typical gesture for _night_ is as follows: Place the flat hands, horizontally, about two feet apart, move them quickly in an upward curve toward one another until the right lies across the left.

"Darkness covers all." See Fig. 312, page 489.

The conception of covering executed by delineating the object covered beneath the middle point of an arch or curve, appears also clearly in the Egyptian characters for _night_, Fig. 144 (Champollion, _Dict._, p. 3).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 144.]

The upper part of the character is taken separately to form that for sky (see page 372, _infra_).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 145.]

The Egyptian figurative and linear characters, Figs. 145 and 146 (Champollion, _Dict._, p. 28), for _calling upon_ and _invocation_, also used as an interjection, scarcely require the quotation of an Indian sign, being common all over the world.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 146.]

The gesture sign made by several tribes for _many_ is as follows: Both hands, with spread and slightly curved fingers, are held pendent about two feet apart before the thighs; then bring them toward one another, horizontally, drawing them upward as they come together. (_Absaroka_ I; _Shoshoni and Banak_ I; _Kaiowa_ I; _Comanche_ III; _Apache_ II; _Wichita_ II.) "An acc.u.mulation of objects." This may be the same motion indicated by the Egyptian character, Fig. 147, meaning to _gather together_ (Champollion, _Dict._, p. 459).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 147.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 148.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 149.]

The Egyptian character, Fig. 148, which in its linear form is represented in Fig. 149, and meaning to _go_, to _come, locomotion_, is presented to show readers unfamiliar with hieroglyphics how a corporeal action may be included in a linear character without being obvious or at least certain, unless it should be made clear by comparison with the full figurative form or by other means. This linear form might be noticed many times without certainty or perhaps suspicion that it represented the human legs and feet in the act of walking. The same difficulty, of course, as also the same prospect of success by careful research, attends the tracing of other corporeal motions which more properly come under the head of gesture signs.

_SIGN LANGUAGE WITH REFERENCE TO GRAMMAR._

Apart from the more material and substantive relations between signs and language, it is to be expected that a.n.a.logies can by proper research be ascertained between their several developments in the manner of their use, that is, in their grammatic mechanism, and in the genesis of the sentence. The science of language, ever henceforward to be studied historically, must take account of the similar early mental processes in which the phrase or sentence originated, both in sign and oral utterance. In this respect, as in many others, the North American Indians may be considered to be living representatives of prehistoric man.

SYNTAX.

The reader will understand without explanation that there is in the gesture speech no organized sentence such as is integrated in the languages of civilization, and that he must not look for articles or particles or pa.s.sive voice or case or grammatic gender, or even what appears in those languages as a substantive or a verb, as a subject or a predicate, or as qualifiers or inflexions. The sign radicals, without being specifically any of our parts of speech, may be all of them in turn. There is, however, a grouping and sequence of the ideographic pictures, an arrangement of signs in connected succession, which may be cla.s.sed under the scholastic head of syntax. This subject, with special reference to the order of deaf-mute signs as compared with oral speech, has been the theme of much discussion, some notes of which, condensed from the speculations of M. Remi Valade and others, follow in the next paragraph without further comment than may invite attention to the profound remark of LEIBNITZ.

In mimic construction there are to be considered both the order in which the signs succeed one another and the relative positions in which they are made, the latter remaining longer in the memory than the former, and spoken language may sometimes in its early infancy have reproduced the ideas of a sign picture without commencing from the same point. So the order, as in Greek and Latin, is very variable.

In nations among whom the alphabet was introduced without the intermediary to any impressive degree of picture-writing, the order being (1) language of signs, almost superseded by (2) spoken language, and (3) alphabetic writing, men would write in the order in which they had been accustomed to speak. But if at a time when spoken language was still rudimentary, intercourse being mainly carried on by signs, figurative writing had been invented, the order of the figures would be the order of the signs, and the same order would pa.s.s into the spoken language. Hence LEIBNITZ says truly that "the writing of the Chinese might seem to have been invented by a deaf person." The oral language has not known the phases which have given to the Indo-European tongues their formation and grammatical parts. In the latter, signs were conquered by speech, while in the former, speech received the yoke.

Sign language cannot show by inflection the reciprocal dependence of words and sentences. Degrees of motion corresponding with vocal intonation are only used rhetorically or for degrees of comparison.

The relations of ideas and objects are therefore expressed by placement, and their connection is established when necessary by the abstraction of ideas. The sign talker is an artist, grouping persons and things so as to show the relations between them, and the effect is that which is seen in a picture. But though the artist has the advantage in presenting in a permanent connected scene the result of several transient signs, he can only present it as it appears at a single moment. The sign talker has the succession of time at his disposal, and his scenes move and act, are localized and animated, and their arrangement is therefore more varied and significant.

It is not satisfactory to give the order of equivalent words as representative of the order of signs, because the pictorial arrangement is wholly lost; but adopting this expedient as a mere ill.u.s.tration of the sequence in the presentation of signs by deaf-mutes, the following is quoted from an essay by Rev. J.R. Keep, in _American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb_, vol. xvi, p. 223, as the order in which the parable of the Prodigal Son is translated into signs:

"Once, man one, sons two. Son younger say, Father property your divide: part my, me give. Father so.--Son each, part his give. Days few after, son younger money all take, country far go, money spend, wine drink, food nice eat. Money by and by gone all. Country everywhere food little: son hungry very. Go seek man any, me hire.

Gentleman meet. Gentleman son send field swine feed. Son swine husks eat, see--self husks eat want--cannot--husks him give n.o.body. Son thinks, say, father my, servants many, bread enough, part give away can--I none--starve, die. I decide: Father I go to, say I bad, G.o.d disobey, you disobey--name my hereafter _son_, no--I unworthy. You me work give servant like. So son begin go. Father far look: son see, pity, run, meet, embrace. Son father say, I bad, you disobey, G.o.d disobey--name my hereafter _son_, no--I unworthy. But father servants call, command robe best bring, son put on, ring finger put on, shoes feet put on, calf fat bring, kill. We all eat, merry. Why? Son this my formerly dead, now alive: formerly lost, now found: rejoice."

It may be remarked, not only from this example, but from general study, that the verb "to be" as a copula or predicant does not have any place in sign language. It is shown, however, among deaf-mutes as an a.s.sertion of presence or existence by a sign of stretching the arms and hands forward and then adding the sign of affirmation. _Time_ as referred to in the conjunctions _when_ and _then_ is not gestured.

Instead of the form, "When I have had a sleep I will go to the river,"

or "After sleeping I will go to the river," both deaf-mutes and Indians would express the intention by "Sleep done, I river go."

Though time present, past, and future is readily expressed in signs (see page 366), it is done once for all in the connection to which it belongs, and once established is not repeated by any subsequent intimation, as is commonly the case in oral speech. Inversion, by which the object is placed before the action, is a striking feature of the language of deaf-mutes, and it appears to follow the natural method by which objects and actions enter into the mental conception.

In striking a rock the natural conception is not first of the abstract idea of striking or of sending a stroke into vacancy, seeing nothing and having no intention of striking anything in particular, when suddenly a rock rises up to the mental vision and receives the blow; the order is that the man sees the rock, has the intention to strike it, and does so; therefore he gestures, "I rock strike." For further ill.u.s.tration of this subject, a deaf-mute boy, giving in signs the compound action of a man shooting a bird from a tree, first represented the tree, then the bird as alighting upon it, then a hunter coming toward and looking at it, taking aim with a gun, then the report of the latter and the falling and the dying gasps of the bird. These are undoubtedly the successive steps that an artist would have taken in drawing the picture, or rather successive pictures, to ill.u.s.trate the story. It is, however, urged that this pictorial order natural to deaf-mutes is not natural to the congenitally blind who are not deaf-mute, among whom it is found to be rhythmical. It is a.s.serted that blind persons not carefully educated usually converse in a metrical cadence, the action usually coming first in the structure of the sentence. The deduction is that all the senses when intact enter into the mode of intellectual conception in proportion to their relative sensitiveness and intensity, and hence no one mode of ideation can be insisted on as normal to the exclusion of others.

Whether or not the above statement concerning the blind is true, the conceptions and presentations of deaf-mutes and of Indians using sign language because they cannot communicate by speech, are confined to optic and, therefore, to pictorial arrangement.

The abbe Sicard, dissatisfied with the want of tenses and conjunctions, indeed of most of the modern parts of speech, in the natural signs, and with their inverted order, attempted to construct a new language of signs, in which the words should be given in the order of the French or other spoken language adopted, which of course required him to supply a sign for every word of spoken language.

Signs, whatever their character, could not become a.s.sociated with words, or suggest them, until words had been learned. The first step, therefore, was to explain by means of natural signs, as distinct from the new signs styled methodical, the meaning of a pa.s.sage of verbal language. Then each word was taken separately and a sign affixed to it, which was to be learned by the pupil. If the word represented a physical object, the sign would be the same as the natural sign, and would be already understood, provided the object had been seen and was familiar; and in all cases the endeavor was to have the sign convey as strong a suggestion of the meaning of the word as was possible. The final step was to gesticulate these signs, thus a.s.sociated with words, in the exact order in which the words were to stand in a sentence.

Then the pupil would write the very words desired in the exact order desired. If the previous explanation in natural signs had not been sufficiently full and careful, he would not understand the pa.s.sage.

The methodical signs did not profess to give him the ideas, except in a very limited degree, but only to show him how to express ideas according to the order and methods of spoken language. As there were no repet.i.tions of time in narratives in the sign language, it became necessary to unite with the word-sign for verbs others, to indicate the different tenses of the verbs, and so by degrees the methodical signs not only were required to comprise signs for every word, but also, with every such sign, a grammatical sign to indicate what part of speech the word was, and, in the case of verbs, still other signs to show their tenses and corresponding inflections. It was, as Dr.

Peet remarks, a c.u.mbrous and unwieldly vehicle, ready at every step to break down under the weight of its own machinery. Nevertheless, it was industriously taught in all our schools from the date of the founding of the American Asylum in 1817 down to about the year 1835, when it was abandoned.

The collection of narratives, speeches, and dialogues of our Indians in sign language, first systematically commenced by the present writer, several examples of which are in this paper, has not yet been sufficiently complete and exact to establish conclusions on the subject of the syntactic arrangement of their signs. So far as studied it seems to be similar to that of deaf-mutes and to retain the characteristic of pantomimes in figuring first the princ.i.p.al idea and adding the accessories successively in the order of importance, the ideographic expressions being in the ideologic order. If the examples given are not enough to establish general rules of construction, they at least show the natural order of ideas in the minds of the gesturers and the several modes of inversion by which they pa.s.s from the known to the unknown, beginning with the dominant idea or that supposed to be best known. Some special instances of expedients other than strictly syntactic coming under the machinery broadly designated as grammar may be mentioned.

DEGREES OF COMPARISON.

Degrees of comparison are frequently expressed, both by deaf-mutes and by Indians, by adding to the generic or descriptive sign that for "big" or "little." _Damp_ would be "wet--little"; _cool_, "cold--little"; _hot_, "warm--much." The amount or force of motion also often indicates corresponding diminution or augmentation, but sometimes expresses a different shade of meaning, as is reported by Dr. Matthews with reference to the sign for _bad_ and _contempt_, see page 411. This change in degree of motion is, however, often used for emphasis only, as is the raising of the voice in speech or italicizing and capitalizing in print. The Prince of Wied gives an instance of a comparison in his sign for _excessively hard_, first giving that for _hard_, viz: Open the left hand, and strike against it several times with the right (with the backs of the fingers). Afterwards he gives _hard, excessively_, as follows: Sign for _hard_, then place the left index-finger upon the right shoulder, at the same time extend and raise the right arm high, extending the index-finger upward, perpendicularly.